Growing Up On The Mountain

I didn’t see my father fall off the mountain. My only sense of what was taking place was hearing the snap of his right ankle as he tumbled down the embankment.

Growing up middle class with a penny pinching father didn’t exactly offer my family the opportunity to go on wild extravagant vacations. My dad’s idea of a relaxing weekend was sleeping late till six, possibly six fifteen, getting up and finding something to work on or build. But one thing he did love to do was take our family and go backpacking.  Now when I say backpacking, I’m not talking about this stuff of driving up to a campground and sleeping outside twenty feet from your vehicle and indoor bathrooms and showers. No, what I’m talking about is hiking into the wilderness with a fifty-pound pack on your back carrying all the essentials you’ll need to survive the next four days. For my dad, I think it was a chance to just get away from the daily eight-to-five grind of the work week and spend quality time with the family.

By the time I was eight, I had been on plenty of backpacking excursions throughout the New Mexico wilderness. We always went as a family and sometimes would go with other families as well. But the summer of 1997 was different. This time it was just me and my dad. My older brother was about to begin his senior year in high school and had a part-time job sacking groceries to save up for college. July 4^th weekend was approaching and it was going to be Dad’s only time off all summer.  But with my brother being the lowest man on the totem pole at the grocery store, getting off of work for four days over a holiday was next to impossible. So my mom decided to stay home with my brother and let dad and me go off on our own for a four-day backpack to Hermit’s Peak near Las Vegas, New Mexico.

We left the house on a Thursday afternoon. Our plans were to drive down and stay in a hotel in Las Vegas Thursday night, be at the trailhead at first light on Friday backpack for four days, and leave Monday afternoon.

Friday morning was beautiful, a nice cool 55 degrees, and the sun was creeping over the mountain peaks. Dad had his pack loaded down with the majority of the supplies that we’d need over the next few days, and I had all that I could carry with the tent, the stove, and my sleeping bag. The hike we were going on was a fairly simple trek. We would go five miles up into the mountain the first day, five more miles the second, on the third we would just take day hikes without all the weight in our packs and then come down the ten miles on the last day. Our first three days were amazing. The change in elevation brought forth new life and vegetation that I was unaccustomed to on the High Plains of The Panhandle. There's something almost spiritual that happens when one walks through a 3 mile long meadow of aspen trees. The sound they make is like no other. I will never forget that sound...

On the final day, we packed up camp and headed back down the mountain to the campgrounds. About mid-morning we came to our first river crossing. I went across first and as I was stepping from one protruding rock to another I slipped and fell in. Dad was quick to reach down and pull me up from the frigid waters but not before I had become sufficiently soaked. I was cold and wet and we still had a full day of hiking ahead of us if we were going to get off the mountain before night fall.

Several hours later we came across our next river crossing. This one was even larger than the first, with the river being over twenty yards wide where the trail intersected it. Sensing that  I wasn’t too keen on crossing at this location, my dad decided we should get off the trail, go upstream a ways to find a more narrow point to cross, and then head back down river to get back on the trail. After a few hundred yards, we finally came across a much narrower, calmer part of the river that looked easily crossable. We made it across with no problem and were heading back to the trail. As we headed back we stumbled across another trail heading up the side of the mountain from the river valley on a course that looked like it headed directly towards the trail we were heading home on. So rather than traipse along the riverbank climbing over boulders and ducking under branches Dad decided that’s we’ll follow this new trail until we intersected our original one.

We quickly rose more than 50 feet from the river on this trail that seemed to hug the side of the mountain with a steep embankment on either side. Walking in front of my dad, I never saw what happened next. The recent rains had washed out the trail and made the edge on the downhill side weak. One step on a weak patch of the trail and it easily gave way. As we were going along I suddenly heard a snap and turn around to see my dad tumbling down the embankment.  He finally came to a stop about 20 feet down from the trail. As he looks up at me I can see that his face and arms are cut up and bleeding. He tells me to stay where I am as he assessed the situation. He took the 50-pound pack off of his back and set it to the side and then slowly began the difficult task of crawling back up to the trail. Once back up on the hill side he realizes his ankle is broken and hiking the last five miles down the mountain would be impossible. The first question filled our thoughts.

Should he and I stay together hoping that someone passed by?

After sitting down and looking, at the map we realized the washed out trail we’re on was old and had been discontinued by the forest service. Also we had been out in the wilderness three days and had yet to see another person on the trail. So the only feasible option we had left was to let me continue on and hopefully find someone who could get help.

Before I left Dad had me drag his pack up from down the embankment and help him lay out several items for him while I was gone. The whole time I was obviously distraught, but my Dad just put on a face of confidence and assured me everything would be alright. It’s time for me to go. Dad gives me a whistle, two canteens of water, and the keys to the van. He tells me to take my time going down the trail, blow the whistle constantly to attract any attention and if I don’t find anyone just get to the car and sleep in it overnight.

As soon as I was around the corner and out of eyesight I took off running down the mountain. I knew I couldn’t possibly run the entire five miles to the campgrounds, so I decided to walk the flat, level parts of the trail and run whenever the trail would slope downhill. On the way down the mountain my mind was racing much faster than my feet.

What if it was something more serious than a broken ankle?

What if I didn’t find anyone at the campground?

Would he be mad if I drove the van into town?